Flavia is one of a kind. These are a few of my favorite glimpses into her world.
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(I'm with you on this one, Flavia!)
As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
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The de Luce children love squabbling with each other. Flavia, in church with her older sister:
Now, glancing over at Feely as she knelt with her eyes closed, her fingertips touching and pointed to Heaven, and her lips shaping soft words of devotion, I had to pinch myself to keep in mind that I was sitting next to the Devil's Hairball.
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On poisons:
Although I have to admit that I have a soft spot for cyanide - when it comes to speed, it is right up there with the best of them. If poisons were ponies, I'd put my money on cyanide.
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A simile that really caught my imagination. This is Flavia, catching the scent of her long-dead mother's perfume:
The scent was of small blue flowers, mountain meadows, and of ice.
A peculiar feeling passed over me - or, rather, through me, as if I were an umbrella remembering what it felt like to pop open in the rain.
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And Flavia, describing herself and her family:
Once, when I was about nine, I had kept a diary about what it was like to be a de Luce, or at least what it was like to be this particular de Luce. I thought a great deal about how I felt and finally came to the conclusion that being Flavia de Luce was like being a sublimate: like the black crystal residue that is left on the cold glass of a test tube by the violet fumes of iodine.
As I have said, there is something lacking in the de Luces: some chemical bond, or lack of it, that ties their tongues whenever they are threatened by affection. It is as unlikely that one de Luce would ever tell another that she loved her as it is that one peak in the Himalayas would bend over and whisper sweet nothings to an adjacent crag.
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